My 13th Age Report
evilbob
Explorer
The combat-focused character sheet is actually one of the very few things that I am less happy about with 13th Age, but I feel like it's a holdover from 4.0. You're right, though: many of the things written on your actual character sheet pertains to things you do in combat. Several things are not (icons, skills, unique thing, certain abilities, etc.), but many "powers" (which is my own word to describe anything any class can do) are combat-focused and therefore you'd write it down and have it in front of you. That was one thing that I felt contributed to the "my options are limited to what's on my sheet in front of me" nature of the 4.0 games that I participated in, although certainly other people have different experiences with that. I think 13th Age does a lot to unshackle you from that way of thinking, but at some point, you still need to write down what you can do on your character sheet, and many powers are designed to be used in combat.
However, as others have said, many powers are also specifically not for combat, and even some that are can be used in amazingly creative ways - like using the terrain to perform a stunt in some interesting way. Spellcasters especially have a wide array of options that go well beyond a list of powers on a sheet.
However, as others have said, many powers are also specifically not for combat, and even some that are can be used in amazingly creative ways - like using the terrain to perform a stunt in some interesting way. Spellcasters especially have a wide array of options that go well beyond a list of powers on a sheet.
evilbob
Explorer
The "13th Age Prefix" thread has a lot of good information about the game, but just to give some further information about what all you're really getting and why it's worth buying the book, in my mind most of the big stuff you get can be lumped into two piles: mechanical ideas and story-telling ideas.
The mechanical ideas are honestly the thing that appeal to me most. This is reflected in my earlier posts about porting stuff to other versions of D&D. In fact, the main thing that got me interested in 13th Age was that it had some of the mechanics that I wished were in D&D Next, but weren't - and the purchase price of the book was completely worth this to me. It's not just creative but simple ideas like "one unique thing," but entire ways of looking at rule structures that D&D Next seems to be unable to imagine. There's a huge treasure trove of great mechanics to steal that will absolutely be a part of any future D&D games that I run, regardless of the version.
Separately, there are a bunch of huge story-telling ideas. These range from the equally portable icons and setting, to one of the biggest points of actually using the icon relationships: cooperative narrative and improvisational narrative during play. One key theme of 13th Age is the idea that the PCs are the stars of the show and they absolutely influence the story, from its meta direction all the way down to telling the GM that there's a funky terrain feature will now be used to do something awesome (look, a beehive in the tree, which I knock onto the bugbear's head!).
Some of these ideas were less useful to me personally because of the way I tend to run games. I usually have most plot points laid out well in advance to help lay down foreshadowing and structure in the world; 13th Age's storytelling lends itself more toward an episodic sort of adventure, where the "super meta plot" may be in stone, but whatever you're doing each session has an extremely high degree of variability. PCs are headed to the Archmage's outpost this session? *icon roll* Ok, actually it's the High Druid's outpost we're going to today, and that means instead of mages and magical wards there are druids and dire bears. This sort of highly improvisational re-skinning on the fly is great for some GMs, because it naturally fills in all the details while they're painting the plot with a broad brush. If you plan by saying, "I want the PCs to encounter a villain on top of a tower," this this is great - you just got your villain and tower and everything laid out for you! However, if you're the type that already planned which villain and what tower based on the story structure you've long-since created and foreshadowed and planned around, that type of improvisation is more disruptive than helpful. Obviously there are multiple depths of improvisation I'm talking about here, and the minute-by-minute stuff is absolutely still fun and useful to me. I just rarely run a game that's "just show up and kick down some doors," which makes some of the mid-level icon relationship rules less useful to me.
Interestingly, what I find the icon relationship rules are absolutely perfect for: running demo games. Both in selling the game to others and in rapid iteration of ideas during design, "rolling up a story" in just a few seconds is perfect when you're doing one-shots. If you're a more one-shot sort of GM, I can't imagine a better system to get you going.
The mechanical ideas are honestly the thing that appeal to me most. This is reflected in my earlier posts about porting stuff to other versions of D&D. In fact, the main thing that got me interested in 13th Age was that it had some of the mechanics that I wished were in D&D Next, but weren't - and the purchase price of the book was completely worth this to me. It's not just creative but simple ideas like "one unique thing," but entire ways of looking at rule structures that D&D Next seems to be unable to imagine. There's a huge treasure trove of great mechanics to steal that will absolutely be a part of any future D&D games that I run, regardless of the version.
Separately, there are a bunch of huge story-telling ideas. These range from the equally portable icons and setting, to one of the biggest points of actually using the icon relationships: cooperative narrative and improvisational narrative during play. One key theme of 13th Age is the idea that the PCs are the stars of the show and they absolutely influence the story, from its meta direction all the way down to telling the GM that there's a funky terrain feature will now be used to do something awesome (look, a beehive in the tree, which I knock onto the bugbear's head!).
Some of these ideas were less useful to me personally because of the way I tend to run games. I usually have most plot points laid out well in advance to help lay down foreshadowing and structure in the world; 13th Age's storytelling lends itself more toward an episodic sort of adventure, where the "super meta plot" may be in stone, but whatever you're doing each session has an extremely high degree of variability. PCs are headed to the Archmage's outpost this session? *icon roll* Ok, actually it's the High Druid's outpost we're going to today, and that means instead of mages and magical wards there are druids and dire bears. This sort of highly improvisational re-skinning on the fly is great for some GMs, because it naturally fills in all the details while they're painting the plot with a broad brush. If you plan by saying, "I want the PCs to encounter a villain on top of a tower," this this is great - you just got your villain and tower and everything laid out for you! However, if you're the type that already planned which villain and what tower based on the story structure you've long-since created and foreshadowed and planned around, that type of improvisation is more disruptive than helpful. Obviously there are multiple depths of improvisation I'm talking about here, and the minute-by-minute stuff is absolutely still fun and useful to me. I just rarely run a game that's "just show up and kick down some doors," which makes some of the mid-level icon relationship rules less useful to me.
Interestingly, what I find the icon relationship rules are absolutely perfect for: running demo games. Both in selling the game to others and in rapid iteration of ideas during design, "rolling up a story" in just a few seconds is perfect when you're doing one-shots. If you're a more one-shot sort of GM, I can't imagine a better system to get you going.
Dragonblade
Adventurer
I think the icons are easy to not use, or tweak to better fit your style, if you don't like how they work by default. I agree with you that a DM who has everything tightly plotted probably doesn't need an icon roll to shake things up. But the mechanic can be set aside in cases like that without hurting the game in any way.
Its a well designed tool in that you can lean on heavily or not at all depending on your preference.
Its a well designed tool in that you can lean on heavily or not at all depending on your preference.
Imaro
Legend
Yeah I wasn't too sure about using the icon rules at the beginning of play as I like to have time to think on and fill in the details of whatever it is the players are going to be involved in doing. What did you think about the option presented where the players make relationship rolls at the end of each session as opposed to the beginning? I actually was thinking in my campaign I'd do a little of both, but probably lean towards after session rolls until we got more meat in the campaign to improv off of.
evilbob
Explorer
It's all the same to me. Whether I have more time or less doesn't really affect whether or not I would prefer to use random rolls to determine major plot elements in a campaign-style setting. I have no problem improvising: I just like to plan.
There are a few other minor gripes I have with the icon system (I am also not comfortable with random chance deciding who gets to shine each session, and I wish they had more suggestions for how to use the in-session rolls other than "get magic items" or "get information"), but I completely agree that it's very easy to set aside things like icon rolls (by about the fourth session, we stopped using them entirely) and it should not hinder your enjoyment of the system. As has been said: it's probably the most modifiable D&D system I've played.
evilbob
Explorer
[MENTION=6675103]waderockett[/MENTION] may be best suited to answer plans for the future of 13th Age, but I will chime in again to say that conversion may not really be that difficult. I've never tried it, but I imagine that outside of very special adventure-specific mechanics, which you'd always have to come up with something to address, the main thing that you're converting is monsters (assuming a D&D or D&D-like adventure to start with). Given the incredibly open-ended monster rules, it's actually really easy to mix-n-match monster rules and ideas all the time. I was already fiddling with monster stats by two or three sessions in, just to give them more variety (which is part of the rules). So I don't personally think it would take that long to whip something together, once you're comfortable and familiar with how monsters work in 13th Age.
Of course, don't forget you can always go the other way: take the best parts of 13th Age and port them over to the original campaign world of the adventure, and just go from there!
Of course, don't forget you can always go the other way: take the best parts of 13th Age and port them over to the original campaign world of the adventure, and just go from there!
Dragonblade
Adventurer
My personal take is that 13th Age fufills the promise of easy DM prep that 4e only half delivered on. While 4e took away the burden of building monsters as PCs, and having to look up abilities in different books, it came with a different sort of burden to me in terms of building tactical encounters, coming up with a good mix of monsters, terrain, etc.
I eventually got good enough at 4e DMing that I could convert entire Pathfinder adventures to 4e on the fly, but I got burned out on every battle being a big set piece tactical skirmish. I even switched over to Pathfinder for a couple of years, but its prep burden was heavier than 4e's, and I greatly missed having self-contained stat blocks, so I switched back.
I missed the old theater of the mind combats I used to run in AD&D. 13th Age lets me have my cake and eat it too. Monsters are mechanically interesting, but much simpler than 4e monsters. And you can run combats totally on the fly and without a grid.
My natural DM style is very improvisational, and I always struggled to run good games in Pathfinder or 4e without some prep. With 13th Age, I feel comfortable completely winging things. The way I used to run AD&D games years ago. Its been quite refreshing for me.
I eventually got good enough at 4e DMing that I could convert entire Pathfinder adventures to 4e on the fly, but I got burned out on every battle being a big set piece tactical skirmish. I even switched over to Pathfinder for a couple of years, but its prep burden was heavier than 4e's, and I greatly missed having self-contained stat blocks, so I switched back.
I missed the old theater of the mind combats I used to run in AD&D. 13th Age lets me have my cake and eat it too. Monsters are mechanically interesting, but much simpler than 4e monsters. And you can run combats totally on the fly and without a grid.
My natural DM style is very improvisational, and I always struggled to run good games in Pathfinder or 4e without some prep. With 13th Age, I feel comfortable completely winging things. The way I used to run AD&D games years ago. Its been quite refreshing for me.
Thanks to this thread --and some reading up on 13th Age-- it's gone from a "what is that?" to a "must-buy!". Thanks.
It sounds like it could be just the thing for my group(s) when we take a break from 2 years of AD&D (or when/if Pathfinder finally proves too much for me to DM).
Any idea how easy would it be to convert a 14th-level 4e party to 13 Age (do you reckon')? We've got a 4e campaign that got put on hiatus right before the glorious ecclesiastical communist goblin revolution!
It sounds like it could be just the thing for my group(s) when we take a break from 2 years of AD&D (or when/if Pathfinder finally proves too much for me to DM).
Any idea how easy would it be to convert a 14th-level 4e party to 13 Age (do you reckon')? We've got a 4e campaign that got put on hiatus right before the glorious ecclesiastical communist goblin revolution!
Similar Threads
